Naples district guide

Whatever your real
interest is in Campania, the chances are that you'll wind up in
NAPLES - capital of the region and, indeed, of the whole Italian
south. It's the kind of city laden with visitors' preconceptions,
and it rarely disappoints. inhabitants will be keener than
anyone to tell you. In all these things lies the city's charm.
Perhaps the feeling that you're somewhere unique makes it
possible to endure the noise and harassment, perhaps it's the
feeling that in less than three hours you've travelled from an
ordinary part of Europe to somewhere akin to an Arab bazaar. One
thing, though, is certain: a couple of days here and you're
likely to be as staunch a defender of the place as its most
devoted inhabitants. Few cities on earth inspire such fierce
loyalties.

Naples is a surprisingly large city, and a sprawling one, with a
centre that has many different focuses. The area between Piazza
Garibaldi and Via Toledo, roughly corresponding to the old Roman
Neapolis (much of which is still unexcavated below the ground),
makes up the old part of the city - the centro storico - the
main streets still following the path of the old Roman roads.
This is much the liveliest, most teeming part of town, an
open-air kasbah of hawking, yelling humanity that makes up in
energy what it lacks in grace. Buildings rise high on either
side of the narrow, crowded streets, cobwebbed with washing;
there's little light, not even much sense of the rest of the
city outside - certainly not of the proximity of the sea.

But the insularity of the centro storico is deceptive, and in
reality there's another, quite different side to Naples, one
that's much more like the sunwashed Bay of Naples murals you've
seen in cheap restaurants back home. Via Toledo , the main
street of the city, edges the old centre from the Palazzo Reale
up to the Museo Nazionale Archeologico and the heights of
Capodimonte ; to the left rises the V?ero , with its fancy
housing and museums, and the smug neighbourhood of Chiaia ,
beyond which lies the long green boulevard of Riviera de Chiara
, stretching around to the districts of Mergellina and Posillipo
: all neighbourhoods that exert quite a different kind of pull -
that of an airy waterfront city, with views, seafood eaten al
fresco and peace and quiet.